


God Knows I’ve Failed (But He Knows That I Tried)

by theshipsfirstmate



Category: Arrow (TV 2012)
Genre: Angst, F/M, post-4x10 fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-21
Updated: 2016-01-21
Packaged: 2018-05-15 08:07:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,862
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5777902
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theshipsfirstmate/pseuds/theshipsfirstmate
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>post-4x10, Oliver and Felicity start to work through it all. </p>
<p>“When the doctors give her the diagnosis, she swears she’ll only cry for herself when he’s not there to see it. As it turns out, there’s plenty of time to cry.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	God Knows I’ve Failed (But He Knows That I Tried)

 

_Title from “[Feather on the Clyde](http://t.umblr.com/redirect?z=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DtTV259Iyr4w&t=ZGZlZDI4MGE2M2U5ZWQ4OGQzMTI5NjhkODUwZDJjYWQ0NDVkMTIwZixFN1RRa0NuYQ%3D%3D)” by Passenger_

**God Knows I’ve Failed (But He Knows That I Tried)**

The last thing she remembers tasting is her own blood in her mouth. The last thing she remembers seeing are his desperate eyes. The last thing she remembers hearing is his voice, rasping like loose gravel on an unpaved road, telling her it was going to be okay.

The last thing Felicity remembers feeling, apart from a burn in her chest that felt a blow torch to her ribcage, is someone tugging on her left hand.

* * *

It takes him a full hour after he collapses into a waiting room chair to call anyone, and he only knows that because SportsCenter begins again on the grainy TV that’s mounted too high on the wall.

They file in, his family, one after another. Thea, Digg, Donna, Laurel, even Quentin. They cry and they hug him, pressing wet spots in the dress shirt that’s still tacky with her blood. They try to tell him exactly what he told Felicity, practically begged of her as she slipped away. _“Everything’s going to be alright.”_

He doesn’t believe any of it.

When Donna finally forces him to leave, protests that she and Quentin will take a watch while he goes home to sleep and shower, Oliver lies to her five times, right in a row.

When he sets foot outside the hospital, he doesn’t want to go back until he can take her home with him.

* * *

The first person she sees when she wakes up is a stranger. The second is her mother. When she counts off one hand with no sign of him, Felicity knows for sure he’s not there. Quentin is, though, and Thea and Laurel stop by. Diggle brings her flowers he says are from Oliver. She doesn’t believe him.

They all wear the same sad expression, and for the time being, only her mother’s isn’t outlined with rage. They toss looks between themselves like she can’t see them, and she hates that, hates their thinly-veiled fear, hates that she finds herself comforting them.

“I’m gonna be fine,” she tells them with forced lightness, then sets on trying to make herself believe it.

* * *

It’s a special kind of torture, that his little sister has to be the one to tell him there’s bad news waiting for him at the hospital. Even through her mask, when he looks down at Thea, he sees her in that bed, sees the moment he thought he had lost her forever.

He enters the hospital in a daze, head spinning until he finds Donna, who asks him one bitter question in a voice that tells him something horrible has happened. His head goes as clear as her icy tone. _“Where have you been?”_ There’s no anger in it, just acerbic acceptance of his failure, the loss of goodwill he probably didn’t deserve in the first place. He hates himself furiously in that moment, knowing that that both Felicity and her mother learned their lessons of heartbreak and self-reliance the hard way.

It would be so much easier if she had it in her to make a scene. It would be so much easier if his selfishness was the greatest of their worries. If would be so much easier if the news she had to tell him didn’t make his world stop spinning for what feels like too long to be healthy.

He tells her she’s wrong, frantically, blindly, because all of a sudden, the only thing he can see is Felicity walking towards him in a white dress and the only thing he can feel is her ring clenched in his fist so tightly it starts to break the skin.

Later, when he sicks Lonnie Machin on Darhk, he has a rush of something he’s felt a few times before, this time it’s stronger than ever. This is how it could have happened, this is the kind of villain he could have become. This is who he could be if he let the darkness take over. And he knows now there will always be darkness.

But Felicity’s fought so hard to keep him in the light, has battled for his team and his city and his salvation. She deserves justice before he deserves vengeance. That’s the only thought that reigns him in, the only belief that helps him keep breathing.

* * *

When the doctors give her the diagnosis, she swears she’ll only cry for herself when Oliver’s not there to see it. As it turns out, there’s a lot of time to cry.

Her mother moves past terrified on to furious, and Felicity’s not sure she’d accept Oliver’s absence even if she knew the real reason behind it. It’s partly her father’s fault, she knows he put the vitriol in Donna all those years ago, but the understanding doesn’t make anything hurt less.

“You should think long and hard before taking that ring back,” says the woman who couldn’t stop squealing about their engagement just a few days ago.

Felicity opens her mouth to defend him, to weave another web of lies, but the sight of her empty left hand steals her breath away. She hadn’t noticed it was gone.

* * *

When his plan to track Machin fails almost immediately, every bit of John’s warning not to lose himself gets mired deeper in hopeless, furious frustration, until Oliver feels like he’s about to erupt.

Thea asks him, “What do we do now?” It sounds like she’s talking about Felicity, and he doesn’t fucking _know_ what to do. He wanted to marry her, to chase the one tiny spark of happiness fate had dropped in his life, to forget the feeling of a loved one dying in his arms.

“That was the whole plan.”

It’s embarrassing, the fact that things go badly enough that they have to force him to go to her. It’s embarrassing that they have to force him at all.

And ironically, he knows it’s Felicity’s fault he can’t avenge her properly. He operated best as a vigilante when he needed no one, and now, he can’t do any of this without her. Her love made him someone else, someone to whom she was indispensable, and now he feels like that person is failing her when she needs him most.

* * *

It’s not the first time she’s seen him since she’s woken up, but it’s the first one that feels lucid and visceral and when his face contorts in a guilty grimace at her offered “Hey, stranger,” she knows it’s really him.

She’s seen him in her dreams, and a few hallucinations, and in all of them, he was addled with guilt, consumed with anguish and misery. All she wants is to see him smile, so she jokes with him until he does, and the knot in her chest loosens a little.

He is anguished, though it twists in its own strange way that it’s more about Damien Darhk than her. It’s more about the revenge than the reason. When she questions his focus, it’s a more direct hit than she was hoping, and she realizes he’s gone dark quicker than she thought. He’s made so much progress, but it was probably foolish to think there wasn’t any of old Oliver in there. 

She almost laughs bitterly when she realizes she should probably be glad he’s not _actually_ in Bali.

She never meant to doubt him, promised herself she wouldn’t cry, but when she can’t _not_ ask him anymore, everything goes right out the window. It might just be better to know now, when she can’t possibly feel any worse. And the ring…

* * *

He can’t let her finish the sentence, can’t believe it takes her spelling it out to realize just how selfish he’s been in her name. She can read him well enough to know he’s going off the rails, but has no idea of the depth of his devotion. The blame for that lies squarely on his shoulders.

He had a plan for putting that ring back on her finger, it’s been one of the things that kept him going. But the plan’s gone the second her tearful voice turns to a whimper, and when he presses his certain lips to hers, he has to fights the impulse to pick her up and carry her to the chapel right then and there.

That the rest of them spend their nights jumping off rooftops and Felicity’s the one that loses her legs is just a new torturous twist to their story, and when he tells Laurel later how strong she is, they both know it’s mostly for his own reassurance. She’ll have to be, to spend a lifetime with him.

But how long is a lifetime, anyway?

Damien Darhk warned him that his time is limited, and he remembers Harrison Wells telling him he’d live to be 86. Even if he’s using them up faster than he used to, he’s not sure how he’s supposed to survive fifty-plus more years of this. Especially when he can’t even keep her safe for one night.

* * *

The next time he comes back, he’s sorrier, but that’s not what she wanted. He’s sadder too, like he’s lost the fire in his eyes, and when he tells her he wants to go to Bali, it feels like the opposite of the question he asked her last spring, though she loves him just the same.

It’s not driving into the sunset, it’s fleeing into the wind. It’s not an adventure he’s offering, it’s an escape. One she knows they both know they can’t take. They’re in this now. For better or for worse.

He smiles then, asks her how she got so strong, and she wants to tell him the truth. She wants to tell him that’s what happens when everyone leaves you, but he knows that much. She wants to tell him about that time her father tried to come back, but she swore to her mother she’d never tell another soul. She wants to tell Oliver that it’s not strength, it’s just reinforcements, that loving him for so long has forced her to add layers of spackle and veneer every time he cracks her heart right down the middle.

She can’t tell him that, not right now. But also, she won’t lie to him. 

* * *

_“I took my lead from you.”_

He turns that phrase over and over in his head, chews on it long after she dozes off again. He’s not the one who made her strong, they both know that much. But maybe he is a cause. She’s shown more of her courage the longer he’s known her, the longer he’s worked with her, the longer he’s loved her, mostly by necessity. And though it’s nothing that wasn’t there before, it’s made her who she is.

She’s gone to hell and back – with him and sometimes for him – and in the fire, she’s been forged into even stronger steel. Even now, when she tells him, “We have some work to do,” his guilt is tampered down by pride and relief.

She’s darker around the edges, but she’s still his light. For better or for worse.

 


End file.
